Angels, Demons and Satan

St. Gabriel the Archangel

"Fortitudo Dei", one of the three archangels mentioned in the Bible. Only four appearances of Gabriel are recorded:

Thus he is throughout the angel of the Incarnation and of Consolation, and so in Christian tradition Gabriel is ever the angel of mercy while Michael is rather the angel of judgment. At the same time, even in the Bible, Gabriel is, in accordance with his name, the angel of the Power of God, and it is worth while noting the frequency with which such words as "great", "might", "power", and "strength" occur in the passages referred to above. The Jews indeed seem to have dwelt particularly upon this feature in Gabriel's character, and he is regarded by them as the angel of judgment, while Michael is called the angel of mercy. Thus they attribute to Gabriel the destruction of Sodom and of the host of Sennacherib, though they also regard him as the angel who buried Moses, and as the man deputed to mark the figure Tau on the foreheads of the elect (Ezech., 4). In later Jewish literature the names of angels were considered to have a peculiar efficacy, and the British Museum possesses some magic bowls inscribed with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac incantations in which the names of Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel occur. These bowls were found at Hillah, the site of Babylon, and constitute an interesting relic of the Jewish captivity. In apocryphal Christian literature the same names occur, cf. Enoch, ix, and the Apocalypse of the Blessed Virgin.

As remarked above, Gabriel is mentioned only twice in the New Testament, but it is not unreasonable to suppose with Christian tradition that it is he who appeared to St. Joseph and to the shepherds, and also that it was he who "strengthened" Our Lord in the garden (cf. the Hymn for Lauds on 24 March). Gabriel is generally termed only an archangel, but the expression used by St. Raphael, "I am the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord" (Tob., xii, 15) and St. Gabriel's own words, "I am Gabriel, who stand before God" (Luke 1, 19), have led some to think that these angels must belong to the highest rank; but this is generally explained as referring to their rank as the highest of God's messengers, and not as placing them among the Seraphim and Cherubim (cf. St. Thomas, I, Q. cxii, a.3; III, Q. xxx, a.2, ad 4um).

 

What Does the Bible say about Angels?

God's angels are described as:

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? (Heb 1:14)

All of the angels were created by Jesus:

For by Him [Jesus] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. (Col 1:16 )

The Lord Jesus created all of the angels. This even includes Michael the archangel, which some cults wrongly think is Jesus!

Angels are powerful spirit beings:

God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with His powerful angels. (2 Th 1:6,7)

Yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful , do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord. (2 Pet 2:11)

Angels do not marry and have baby angels:

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. (Mat 22:30)

God's angels worship Jesus:

And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, "Let all God's angels worship him [Jesus]." (Heb 1:6)

God's angels obey Him:

Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His word. (Psa. 103:20)

God's angels praise Him:

Praise Him, all His angels, praise Him, all His heavenly hosts. (Psa. 148:2)

God's angels refuse to receive worship:

Then the angel said to me, "Write: 'Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!' " And he added, "These are the true words of God." At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, "Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." (Rev 19:9,10)

And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. But he said to me, "Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers the prophets and of all who keep the words of this book. Worship God!" (Rev. 22:8,9).

It is vitally important that we worship ONLY the true and living God. NEVER would an angel or any servant of God ever direct you to worship an angel, any person or creation itself.

Angels attended Jesus after the Devil's temptations:

Then the devil left Him, and angels came and attended Him. (Mat 4:11)

Jesus could have been delivered by legions of angels from his cruel death on the cross:

Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels ? (Mat 26:53)

Angels were present after Jesus rose from the grave:

But Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. (John 20:11,12)

Angels can guard the righteous:

For He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; (Psa. 91:11)

Angels can bring deliverance:

My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O king. (Dan 6:22)

But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. (Acts 5:19)

God executes His Judgment through angels:

He unleashed against them His hot anger, His wrath, indignation and hostility -- a band of destroying angels. (Psa. 78:49)

Angels will be used to find everything that causes sin and all who do evil (the unsaved):

The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will weed out of His kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. (Mat 13:41)

Angels will throw people into the fiery furnace:

This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Mat 13:49,50)

When Jesus returns He will come with angels:

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then He will reward each person according to what he has done. (Mat 16:27)

Angels will gather the righteous at the point of the rapture:

And He will send His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. (Mat 24:31)

And He will send his angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens. (Mark 13:27)

Upon their death, angels carry the righteous to their home in the afterlife:

The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. (Luke 16:22)

Angels observe the servants of God:

For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. (1 Cor 4:9)

Angels will be judged by Christians:

Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! (1 Cor 6:3)

The archangel Gabriel is one of those angels specifically named in the Bible, and he is always bringing a message:

The angel answered, "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. (Luke 1:19)

In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, (Luke 1:26)

(Gabriel is also mentioned in Dan 8:16; 9:21.)

Another angel named in Scripture is Michael.

The archangel Michael (Jude 9) is a warring angel, but there are other archangels too (Dan. 10:13). Yet in the future, Michael and his angels will fight against Satan [the dragon] and his angels:

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down -- that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. (Rev 12:7-9)

Children all have personal angels that appear before God:

See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of My Father in heaven. (Mat 18:10)

Angels can appear as people undetected:

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. (Heb 13:2)

An angel of God appeared to an unsaved man and accurately told him how to learn about God's salvation:

One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God , who came to him and said, "Cornelius!" Cornelius stared at him in fear. "What is it, Lord?" he asked. The angel answered, "Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: (Acts 10:3-5).

This is a key passage, for in it we learn that an angel from God will always promote the message found in the Holy Bible! The unnamed angel in the above passage did this by telling Cornelius how to find Peter, one of the Lord's disciples, who could tell him the truth about salvation. See Acts 10:43. When a "spirit guide" communicates a message, we can unmask the veil by learning what such a spirit being says about the Lord Jesus and the salvation he provided for all of mankind when he shed his precious, cleansing blood on the cross. If such is denied in any way or would promote any unscriptural message or practice, then that spirit being is a demon trying to deceive people. Hence, there exists an incredible need to know the Bible to safeguard against such. The end result of the angelic visitation to Cornelius was Biblical salvation for him and all of his household!

Angels are immortal:

And they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection. (Luke 20:36)

One solitary angel of God will seize Satan, the great deceiver, and throw him into the Abyss during the 1,000 year reign of Christ:

And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended (Rev. 20:1-3).

During the Perfect Age, angels will be stationed as guards at the twelve gates entering New Jerusalem:

It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. (Rev 21:12)

There are multitudes of angels in heaven in joyful assembly:

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, (Heb 12:22)

Some people in Jesus' day did not believe in the existence of angels like in our day:

The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. (Acts 23:8)

False teachers can be involved in the worship of angels, which is always forbidden:

Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. (Col 2:18)

It is also important to know that you should NEVER CALL ON AN ANGEL for guidance, deliverance, etc. To do so will open yourself up for spiritual deception. According to the Bible, we should ONLY call on God. We are also to TRUST ONLY IN GOD for deliverance, NOT AN ANGEL. While it is true that God might deliver us with angels it is still God who is our Rock, Fortress, Deliverer. God commands His angels what to do. They obey Him.

 

What Does the Bible say about Demons?

At least some of the angels that sinned long ago have been bound and put away:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned , but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; (2 Pet 2:4)

And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home -- these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. (Jude 1:6)

It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates." (Rev 9:14)

Pagan religions "sacrifice to demons":

They sacrificed to demons, which are not God -- gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear. (Deut. 32:17)

They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. (Psa. 106:37)

Thousands of demons grouped together inside one person begged Jesus:

The demons begged Jesus, "If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs." (Mat 8:31)

A Christian has spiritual authority to drive out demons:

He called His twelve disciples to Him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. (Mat 10:1)

Some spirits (demons) are more wicked than other ones:

Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation. (Mat 12:45)

Jesus cast out demons or evil spirits:

The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, "What is this? A new teaching -- and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him." (Mark 1:27)

For Jesus had commanded the evil spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places. (Luke 8:29)

Jesus drove out demons by the Spirit of God:

But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God , then the kingdom of God has come upon you. (Mat 12:28)

Demons know Jesus is the Son of God, unlike some people:

Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, "You are the Son of God." (Mark 3:11)

A fortune teller might be possessed by a demon spirit:

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved." She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!" At that moment the spirit left her. When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone ... (Acts 16:16-19)

When the demon spirit was cast our of that girl, her special powers to predict the future were totally gone. This was also apparent to the owners of that slave.

Unlike some people, demons believe there is a God and "shudder":

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that -- and shudder. (James 2:19)

Mary Magdalene had seven demons in her before she became a Christian:

When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. (Mark 16:9)

And also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out (Luke 8:2)

Evil spirits can torment people:

Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed. (Acts 5:16)

Worshiping demons will be a characteristic of the end of this age:

The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons , and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood -- idols that cannot see or hear or walk. (Rev 9:20)

Evil spirits in John's vision looked like frogs:

Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. (Rev 16:13)

This does not mean that a frog is a demon!

Demons can perform miracles:

They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty. (Rev 16:14)

NOTE: Demons can produce certain miracles! Not all spirits are from God. Some spirits are deceitful and are trying to mislead us:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. (1 Tim 4:1)

There are many ways in which demons can deceive people, but the more common ones are through any occult involvement, ouija boards, séances, spiritualism, witchcraft, and especially devil worship (Satanism).

 

What the Bible says about Satan:

 

The Devil has one general goal for you, your family and friends -- "to devour":

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. (1 Pet 5:8)

The preventatives cited are clear and twofold: (1) We must be self-controlled. (2) We must be alert to his clever schemes.

Do NOT give the Devil an opportunity to tempt you or lead you away from God:

And do not give the devil a foothold. (Eph 4:27)

Satan tempted the Lord Jesus by quoting Scripture which mentioned angels:

"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command His angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' " (Mat 4:6)

The Devil can quote Scripture! This is a disturbing but important truth to know about our chief, spiritual adversary! To make matters even worse, false teachers can do the same! Therefore, we must make sure Scripture is not used out of context. To do this we must consider the verses before and after the verse in question. Also, when trying to arrive at the proper interpretation of Scripture, we must consider all verses on any given subject.

Satan can transform himself into looking like an angel from God:

And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. (2 Cor 11:14)

If even an angel from heaven would declare a salvation message different from that found in Scripture, that angel is not only wrong but accursed for doing so:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! (Gal 1:8)

Satan's Final End Is Everlasting Torment:

And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (Rev 20:10)

Eternal fire beyond the grave was prepared for "the devil and his angels":

Then he will say to those on His left, Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. (Mat 25:41)

Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)

Test everything. Hold on to the good. (1 Th 5:21)

Our standard is the Word of God, which is used for testing all teachings (2 Tim. 3:16,17). It is in the Bible that we can be made "wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 3:15).